Random Odds and Ends

Interesting article on Yahoo! (Internet Archive link) about the Onlive cloud system for playing higher end games on lower end computers. As someone with a fairly low-end cpu, the idea is intriguing - as someone with a 360, Wii and PS3, I'm firmly in the corner of having hardware that just plays games under optimal conditions. Probably not for me, but interesting all the same.

Got my Wii back. The first round of the process did not go so smoothly - my UPS shipping label never arrived, so after about 10 days I flagged them down. The next one got to me 2 days later, it was shipped out, repaired and back 3 days later. So that time the process ran about a week. Having picked up a handful of new Wii games, including one for the kids for Christmas, I'm rather hoping to roll out some Wii reviews again soon. Spent some time tonight playing Wii Sports Resort tonight with my son, rebuilding Mii's and fiddling around with Dr. Mario Online Rx. Good times. :)

Not sure specifically what was wrong with the Wii - they replaced the whole thing it looks like, so it must have been a fairly major failure. Still, $85 shipped, replaced, with a 1 year warranty isn't too bad - and I had heard horror stories about how ds's and wii's could be tough to get your downloaded games back onto. It wasn't bad at all, they associated the new machine with my old, and my prior downloads list was on there, so Mario Party, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy, Pokemon Rumble and more simply had to be downloaded. Perhaps the biggest bummer was the loss of the save data. Makes me want to start using the SD card and see if that's a bit more reliable since between this and my daughter accidentally reformatting it this summer, we've had to rebuild our Smash Bros. and Mario Kart data for the 3rd time now.

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OnLive - console-less gameplay?

I've been hearing about OnLive for about a year now, right after it was first announced. The idea was certainly interesting - but like many people I had my doubts that it would work as well as advertised. Yahoo! just ran an article on it, talking about some of the pros and cons they found with it. What is OnLive? In short, it's a way to play top end computer games without having a console system or top end computer. The games are actually run on their servers and the video is streamed back to your screen. Basically, it does all of the work behind the scenes for you. It apparently supports Mac computers too, so they would have access to some cool games they might not normally.

The good from what I've seen? No consoles, no top-flight computers needed, it's easy to purchase stuff and it seems to run pretty well.

The bad? Well, for me these stand out - you buy the games and pay for a service. Decide to quit paying for the service - you lose access to your games. As someone who does a lot of used game purchasing and selling, this makes me a bit twitchy in and of itself. The graphics are not as good as having a top end machine (I'm sure there's some scaling done to help smooth out the transfer of data) - and I am a bit of a snob with my graphics and sound (isn't this one of the main reason we traded in our Xbox's, Playstation 2's and Gamecubes for 360's, PS3's and Wii's?).

Another downside the article pointed out, and a primary concern for most people in general, has been the potential for lag. Game lag is frustrating, and by the very nature of the service there is going to be some. A lot of people won't care. Some, like me, would probably find it rather annoying. One thing the article didn't touch on is if the lag gets even worse than 'normal' when playing online matches or you get to a very graphics intensive part where even on a console you experience tearing or dropped frames.

The last deal killer for me? You have to be on broadband with ethernet. No dial-up, no wireless. My 360 and my wife's computer are the only wired systems. My laptops? My desktop? Nope - and I don't sit anywhere near our router, so that would be a a major shortcoming as well.

It's an interesting idea, and with console costs being rather expensive, but I think this is an idea that would have gained more traction a couple of years ago when the costs were higher. Now that there's been price cuts to the big 3 consoles and a decent computer doesn't really cost too much to build - it almost feels to me like OnLive may have come out a bit too late for its own good - but time will tell I suppose.

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